Blog: Customer Data Management

When it comes to deciding between implementing a CRM solution in-house or partnering with a provider for delivery, you'll want to be confident about the availability of your application and have a robust monitoring process.  At CSG's Quaero, monitoring is an integral component of the Operations processes and is standard across all clients.  

When it comes to "What" and "How" to monitor, things can be daunting.  Consider these four categories to simplify the process:

Data profiling is the process of analyzing data sets to gather information on data types, statistics, patterns, relationships and other attributes.  This process is a critical task often scheduled just prior to the start of a design phase for a new database initiative.  Typically, data profiling is seen primarily as an input for data modeling and ETL design to identify data types and entity relationships.  The value of thorough data profiling actually extends far beyond these tasks and may help steer the direction of the project and ensure its success.

Below are some of the ways data profiling can add value during a new database initiative: 

In my last post, I wrote about Collocation and Fully Managed IT infrastructure delivery options, and what each means in general terms.  In short, these two delivery options give companies varying amounts of control and responsibility over their IT infrastructure. 

In this post, I'm going to focus on Cloud Computing.  I'm sure you've heard the term Cloud Computing, but do you know if it's right for your organization?  Here at CSG's Quaero, we've seen an increase in non-techno-centric companies wanting to focus less on the details of their technical infrastructure and more on the output of it.  For these clients, Cloud Computing can be an attractive delivery model. 

Have you ever been inside a large data center? Spinning hard drives, blinking LEDs and network cables can be quite impressive when you're surrounded by thousands of them, but that image quickly fades for most non-IT staff when they leave the raised floor. In reality, aside from an occasional techno-buzz we might get from a new gadget or application, the value of computing for most business people tends to be in the information, not in the data center. That said, evaluating infrastructure delivery options for your mission critical applications is an important process; let's spend a few minutes thinking about the options.

Customer Data Management. Customer Intelligence Management.  Data Intelligence Management.  The notion of using customer data to drive investment decisions has propagated many organizational names and acronyms over the last few years.  Customer Intelligence Officers were crowned, integrated task forces were formed, and dedicated publications multiplied.  Why?  Because data = $.

"Data hygiene - the art of keeping a direct mail database clean and up-to-date - could prove to be the most irritating buzzword of 2001. But, it could be key to the success of direct mail printers."
-"Data hygiene to be your 2001 buzzword," Printing World, January 8, 2001

So, what is data hygiene?  The term "data hygiene" simply refers to a set of procedures for keeping a name-and-address database in good shape. This usually involves:

• Ensuring the database doesn't contain duplicate records (thus, the terms "dedupe" and "merge-purge").
• Maintaining the addresses in the U.S. Postal Service's standard format to ensure "deliverability" (by "scrubbing" and "parsing," which are other industry terms).

1. Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools (Gartner) -- A good starting point if you want to become familiar with the main vendors in the data quality space.
2. Surprising Value of Data Profiling (Kimball - PDF) -- Ralph Kimball provides a concise explanation about the value of data profiling, one of the essential components of a data quality initiative.
3. 7 Sources of Poor Data Quality (Melissa DATA) -- William Mcnight identifies seven sources of data quality issues:
   • Entry quality
   • Process quality
   • Identification quality
   • Integration quality
   • Usage quality
   • Aging quality
   • Organizational quality

Recently I had the opportunity to work with one of our clients on a campaign response attribution project.  The client is a hosted solution customer using a popular campaign planning and execution tool with a focus on direct mail catalog distribution across North America.  A savvy campaign management team builds complex campaigns with intricate segments at both the business and contact level. Campaign responses arrive in the database in the form of catalog orders generated by the direct mail campaign.

Just like Momma used to say, (data) cleanliness is next to Godliness. Well, not quite, but you get the point...this will make sense by the time we get to the end here.

One weekend not too long ago, I found myself enjoying one of the first sunny days in a while and as I was wrapping up the yard work I wandered out to the mailbox to check the daily delivery of bills and credit card offers...that's when the clouds rolled in again.

Delivering data in "real time" is becoming an increasingly important design requirement for database architects.  However, building a true real time database (where data is available the instant it is created or updated) is a complex design challenge when the database is not the system of record.  Even if the database is indeed the system of record, the complexity of user queries often requires additional aggregation in order to be optimized for reporting, campaigning, analytics, etc.

As everyone is painfully aware, data can be vulnerable when traditional access barriers (such as passwords and firewalls) fail, either through an inside or an outside party. At that point, customer data, partner data and your data move beyond your control.  This is why encryption of any files with customer or sensitive information is not optional at CSG's Quaero, nor should it be at your organization either.

A recent client concern was raised when an unusually high number of mail pieces were returned as undeliverable by the US Post Office (USPO).  The negative impact to the customer is obvious: Not only did they spend good money on postage to mail the piece in the first place, but now they have to expend internal resources to determine the correct addresses, resubmit the documents to the USPS and field customer concerns of late and/or missing mail pieces.

Having just run the NCOA (National Change of Address) updates for the client, it was natural that the client wanted an explanation why the NCOA processing did not catch more of the undeliverable addresses.

In this era of making smarter revenue generating and cost control decisions, there is one easily accessible and informative marketing tool ready to tell you a bit more about your customers' behaviors.  If you know your customers, you can certainly do a better job finding prospects with similar purchase patterns.  I'm not talking about models or demographic enhancements (which are all extremely valuable of course). The tool I have in mind uses U.S. postal zip codes as well as longitude and latitude coordinates to map consumer behavior.   I realize that sounds pretty basic and it is.  This simple and powerful tool can show you how far your customers and prospects will travel for your business or service. 

Retailers and Bankers have been calculating the distance a customer or prospect would travel to their location to determine store/branch openings and closings for years.  Consumers are highly convenience-oriented and it doesn't make sense to be on the wrong side of town or even at the wrong intersection.  It also doesn't make sense to have two locations so close together that they are competing against each other for market share.  Zip code-based behavioral information can help marketers better understand how important location and convenience are in their target consumers' decision making process.

1. New England vs. Silicon Valley (Kevin Hillstrom) -- Key quote: "There may be fundamental differences in the way your customers shop, based solely on geography."
2. The Prediction Lover's Handbook (Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris) -- Definition, use cases, strengths, weaknesses, and prospects for the following techniques: